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Hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving holiday. There was still plenty of good physics about. For instance, I had fun writing about the fluid dynamics of the 1919 Boston Molasses Flood for New Scientist, featuring new work by Nicole Sharp, proprietor of the Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics Tumblr, presented at last week's APS Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting in Portland, Oregon.

How to Brine a Turkey by H.P. Lovecraft. "One day before roasting the turkey, bring one quart water, the Essential Saltes of a long dead Ancestor, bay leaves, and spices to a simmer, stirring until your Ancestor has dissolved." Related: H.P. Lovecraft and the phantom planet.

Geometric Light Installations by Nicolas Rivals Bathe the Spanish Countryside in Red. Per Colossal: "Each temporary piece was captured in a series of long-exposure shots that reveal an unusual juxtaposition between fabricated objects and the natural world." [Image: Nicholas Rivals]

Related: Dan Rather: Now, More Than Ever, We Must Stand Up for Science. Also: Who will advise Trump on science? The Atlantic's Ed Yong on what the president's science advisor actually does.

Mars Quest Reminds Us What Can Happen When We Work Together. Spaceflight is a powerful signifier that achieving ambitious goals requires diverse contributions. In short, “it takes all of us.” Related: Can space exploration be a force for optimism at a time of pessimism? Ron Howard weighs in.

Bottled Finnish Landscapes Captured With Double-Exposure Photography by Christoffer Relander. Per Colossal: "The project, Jarred & Displaced, utilizes double exposures shot on medium format film to combine pristine images of jars with black and white landscapes, collecting scenes shot within forests, neighborhoods, and on top of steep ridges. Each of the images is completely analog as Relander decided to eschew all digital processes for the series." [Image: Christoffer Relander]

In 1952 a man made a set of equations that tried to explain the patterns we see in nature His name was Alan Turing.

Minimal Wire Sculptures That Form 3-Dimensional Shapes by Mitsuru Koga. Per Spoon and Tamago: "His new body of work is a series of delicate wire sculptures placed inside a frame. The wires are fused together just right so that the lines take the form of three-dimensional shapes." [Image: Spoon and Tamago]

The cocktail party is back after a much-needed vacation, with your weekly physics highlights round up. First and foremost, I'm delighted to be back writing for Quanta with this feature on a fascinating new hypothesis by physicist Matthew Fisher. A New Spin on the Quantum Brain: how fragile quantum states may be able to exist for hours (or more) in our warm, wet brain.

Bright Ideas for Dark Art: Murals by Skurk Play Tricks with Light & Night. Per Web Urbanist: "Hailing from New Zealand but living in Bergen, Norway, street artist Skurk hand-cuts stencils and paints large-scale murals around different themes but often involving light and shadow. The works are also site-specific, made to interact with and respond to conditions in a given physical context." [Image: Skurk/Web Urbanist]

Lighting Up the Night Skies. "Astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, in Perth in Western Australia, have produced what they call the Gleamoscope to dial up visions of the night sky over Australia in whatever kind of light you prefer."

Doctor Strange opens this weekend. The Science and Entertainment Exchange teamed up with Marvel for a special event on the underlying science that went into creating this wonderful piece of fiction. And then they made a video about it.

Secret life of a physicist: moments of transcendence offset by months of confusion. Having to move position so regularly means there is little stability, but there is something special about uncovering nuggets of universal truth about the cosmos.

What is the purpose of life? Life itself runs on increasing entropy. Here's the final collaborative video from Minute Physics and Sean Carroll; Sean also posted all five videos in the series on his blog.

The cocktail party will be on vacation for the rest of October, as Jen-Luc Piquant and the Time Lord kick back in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. We'll be back with weekly physics roundups on November 5. In the meantime, here's a quick recap of some of the top physics stories this week.

The math of rumor spreading. "Studying the spread of rumours allows us to understand how misinformation spreads, and can in turn help us to counter the effects. Alternatively, inside knowledge of how rumours work can be used to disseminate information quickly in an emergency, or create effective viral and political marketing campaigns."

It was a big week for science--Nobel Prize week, to be exact. And the question weighing on JenLuc Piquant's mind was, would the physics prize go to LIGO or not? Lots of folks were rooting for LIGO, but the prize went to Michael Kosterlitz, Duncan Haldane, and David J. Thouless instead, "for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.”

That said, Wired failed big time with this post: Nobel Prize in Physics Goes to Another Weird Thing Nobody Understands. Seriously? This is a prime example of what happens when science writers just throw up their hands in defeat and don't even try to do their jobs. Do better next time, guys.

Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (which often overlaps with physics) was awarded to Fraser Stoddart, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, and Ben Feringa "for the design and synthesis of molecular machines." Per the Washington Post, Stoddart "literally reinvented the wheel on a microscopic scale." Here's a nice explainer about the work in terms a high school student would understand. Related: The Typical Chemistry Nobel Winner Changed After 1980. Also: What's Next For Molecular Machines And The 2016 Nobel Prize In Chemistry?

Try the 3-D puzzle game that teaches you to optimise quantum computer programs. "The idea behind the game is that a quantum program can power your spacecraft. But the program you have is too big and therefore has to be made smaller using various tools that can refashion it."

The Beautiful and Complicated Art of Handcrafting Nixie Tubes, cold cathode displays commonly used before LEDs. Per Czech artist Dalibor Farný: "The nixie tube is a vintage display device which had been used until 70s when it was replaced with LED displays. The complex knowledge of manufacture of nixie tubes literally died with tube factory’s engineers, glassblowers and machine operators."

Meet the mathekniticians - and their amazing woolly maths creations. Married couple Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer have been knitting and crocheting mathematical images and objects for more than two decades.

STEM Education Is Vital--but Not at the Expense of the Humanities. Politicians trying to dump humanities education will hobble our economy.

Chasing the Sun: Astronomer Annie Maunder achieved many firsts in her lifetime, but her story has slipped from history.

Meet the New Math, Same as the Old Math: The latest effort to overhaul math and science education offers a fundamental rethinking of the basic structure of knowledge. But will it be given time to work?

Yesterday was my last as science editor at Gizmodo. It's been a wild ride the last year, with trials and judgements, bankruptcy, and sale to a new owner. Somehow we all managed to pull together and keep putting out great science stories in the midst of the chaos, and I'm confident those who remain will keep right on doing so. Jen-Luc Piquant will be taking a well-deserved vacation to Scotland later this month--binging on Outlander as preparation--and returning to freelancing after that. The cocktail party, as always, will remain. And here's a fresh batch of cool physics links to prove it.

Me at Gizmodo:

Another Psychological Study Fails the Reproducibility Test. "The field of psychology is currently in the midst of a kind of civil war, with one side claiming a widespread reproducibility crisis, and the other just as loudly proclaiming that concerns are greatly exaggerated. There’s certainly evidence for the former. Last year, a University of Virginia initiative called the Reproducibility Project repeated 100 experiments and failed to replicate fully one-third of them. Add yet another one to that list: a classic 30-year-old study concluding that people who smiled while holding a pen between their teeth thought cartoons were funnier."

Those Used Coffee Grounds Could Get the Lead Out of Your Water. "Those used coffee grounds you dump into the trash every morning might just help remove lead and mercury from drinking water one day, according to a new study by a team of Italian scientists."

X-Ray Images of Bird Feathers Hold the Secret to Dinosaur Colors. "Textbook illustrations and museum dioramas could soon be even more accurate in their depiction of the rich colors of long-extinct animals like dinosaurs. An international team of scientists used advanced X-ray imaging techniques to map out elements related to pigmentation in modern birds of prey, which they will use to reconstruct the likely color patterns of fossil specimens." [Image: N. Edwards et al./Scientific Reports]

How Venomous Creatures Can Kill You--Or One Day Save Your Life. "If you’ve ever been stung by a jellyfish while swimming in the ocean, you know firsthand the pain that a venomous creature can inflict, even if it doesn’t outright kill you. But scientists studying the chemical properties of venom might one day be able to develop therapeutic drugs that could save lives. That’s just one of many reasons that Hawaii-based marine biologist Christie Wilcox loves all these venomous little devils—so much so that she’s written an entire book about them, called Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry."

It Would Cost a Whole Lot To Live on the Moon for One Year. "This week Elon Musk announced plans to plans to build a “self-sustaining city” on Mars. It’s a thrilling notion, although folks were quick to point out not just the technical challenges of accomplishing such a feat, but also the tremendous cost. Even living on the Moon for a year would be pretty pricey, as a new video makes clear."

This Amazonian Caterpillar Sports Donald Trump's Hair. "Did Donald Trump happen to lose one of his signature hairpieces in the Amazonian wilds of Peru? Wildlife photographer Jeff Cremer snapped this image of a caterpillar sporting the Republican candidate’s signature bright orange-yellow tufts of hair while on a scouting expedition in Peru."

Strange Dark Galaxy Puzzles Astrophysicists. The surprising discovery of a massive, Milky Way-size galaxy that is made of 99.99 percent dark matter has astronomers dreaming up new ideas about how galaxies form.

Using Mathematics to Repair a Masterpiece: new techniques can be used to revitalize a 650-year-old work of art.

What the Frack is Going On? Is there any truth to the claim that fracking causes earthquakes?

Hubble Discovers New Evidence of Water Geysers on Europa. Related: Could Europa be Spewing Signs of Life? Also: Finding water on Europa is boring; we must look for life. The latest find on Jupiter’s moon Europa offers the potential to really look for life. It’s not time to shy away – and NASA needs to rise to the challenge.

The sexist response to a science book prize. After Andrea Wulf won the Royal Society’s highest honor for her book The Invention of Nature, a writer at The Guardian attributed it to a new fondness for “female-friendly” biographies among prize juries.

Jen-Luc Piquant took a week off from compiling cool physics links, but she's back now! A breakthrough quantum "cat state" experiment with iodine molecules, a new distance record for quantum teleportation, and how Moneyball's basic strategy could help researchers better predict drug toxicity were among the physics highlights of the last two weeks.

Me at Gizmodo:

MoneyballCould Offer Winning Strategy for Drug Development. "Nearly one-third of drugs in development ultimately fail during clinical trials because the side effects are just too severe. Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed a promising new AI tool that better predicts which drug candidates are likely to be too toxic—and it’s based on the Oakland A’s winning strategy, immortalized in the blockbuster book and movie Moneyball."

Wondergadget Allows Researchers To Read a Charred Biblical Scroll by "Virtually" Unwrapping It. "For over forty years, archaeologists have longed to peek inside a badly damaged ancient scroll found on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Now an international team of scientists has managed to do so by virtually unrolling the scroll, revealing the text hidden deep within: the first few verses from the book of Leviticus."

Breakthrough Quantum Cat Experiment Captured on Camera. "The paradox of Schrödinger’s cat—in which a quantum cat is both alive and dead at the same time until we check to see which state it’s in—is arguably the most famous example of the bizarre counter-intuitive nature of the quantum world. Now, Stanford physicists have exploited this feature weirdness to make highly detailed movies of the inner machinery of simple iodine molecules." And they made this adorable animation to illustrate the process:

Now We Know How Beer Foam Stops All That Sloshing. "There’s something especially satisfying about a nice cold brew with a thick head of foam. But that foam also serves a purpose: not only does it enhance the flavor of your beer, it also helps dampen the inevitable sloshing when you and your pals clink glasses. Scientists now think they’ve figured out why."

How Tiny Algae Helped Form the Famous White Cliffs of Dover. "England’s famed White Cliffs of Dover were formed almost 100 million years ago out of the crushed shells of tiny single-celled algae. Now a team of scientists has identified the specific ocean conditions necessary for these sea creatures to thrive."

What Ötzi the Iceman's Voice Sounded Like. "Ötzi the Iceman, the world’s favorite prehistoric mummy, has been subjected to every scientific test imaginable, since his remains were discovered poking out of a glacier high in the Italian Alps in 1991. Now, a team of Italian researchers has reconstructed Ötzi’s vocal cords and used it to reproduce what his voice may have sounded like."

Scientists Made Beautiful Holograms Using Sound via Acoustic Levitation. "We’re all familiar with holograms, the projected 3D images created by manipulating light. But can you create a hologram with sound? Actually, yes. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany used tiny silicone beads assemble into patterns on the surface of water, holding that shape for as long as the sound persisted. In effect, they created acoustic holograms."

Meet the Winners of This Year's Ig Nobel Prizes. "Rats in tiny trousers, pseudoscientific bullshit, the personalities of rocks, and Volkswagen’s, shall we say, “creative” approach to emissions testing were among the research topics honored by the 2016 Ig Nobel Prizes. The winners were announced last night at a live webcast ceremony held at Harvard University."

Does Listening to This Pink Kinetic Sand Give You the Tingles? "Kinetic sand is a freaky-looking substance made of 98 percent sand and 2 percent silicone oil, so it sticks to itself, but won’t stick to anything else. It’s like an especially granular type of dough, and you can watch—and hear—the stuff in action in a new short “trigger” video from The ASMR Circus."

Other Cool Links:

Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World. "Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement.” Related: Scientists Set a New Distance Record for Quantum Teleportation.

The Physics of Why Modern Football Will Never Be Completely Safe: "no helmet is capable of preventing every concussion."

Supermaterials Offer New Means of Searching for Superlight Dark Matter, according to two papers published last week in the Physical Review Letters.

The Strange Second Life of String Theory. String theory has so far failed to live up to its promise as a way to unite gravity and quantum mechanics.At the same time, it has blossomed into one of the most useful sets of tools in science.

Men are better at maps until women take this course. "The powerful lesson: While gender gaps in spatial cognition are real, they’re not fixed." Related: "How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math": The building blocks are memorization and repetition.

Explosions in the Sky: Geometric Watercolors by Artist Jacob Van Loon. Per Colossal: "Recent Colorado transplant Jacob van Loon creates geometric watercolors that seem to visually reference abstract architectural renderings. The colors in his works look as if they have bled beyond recognition of a specific site or landmark, yet still retain a strict set of dense and chaotic lines. " [Image: Jacob van Loon]

Don’t Panic, But There’s An Asteroid Right Over There. We’re still trying to find all the space invaders that could damage Earth.

Probing the Depths (or Shallows) of Candidates' Views on Science Policy. "Clinton’s answers on climate change and public health reflect positions she’s campaigned on for months. Trump’s answers are more mercurial." Related: The Science Of Trump: Energy, Space And Military Tech. Also: The Science Of Clinton: Education, Advanced Manufacturing And More Money For Research.

Responding Rapidly to Big Physics Discoveries with.... workshops. How do scientists react to major breaking science news? For astrophysicists after the big gravitational waves announcement, it was meeting for two weeks in Santa Barbara, California.

A New Refutation of Time: Borges on the Most Paradoxical Dimension of Existence. “Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”

Wow. Geometrikaraoke, 3D Geometric Shapes Pop Out From Urban Streets In Rhythm With the Soundtrack. Per Laughing Squid: "Artist Oscar López Rocha aka lorochrom has created “Geometrikaraoke“, a fascinating 3D animation in which geometric shapes pop out of urban footage taken previously in perfect time."

Physicists detect cosmic neutrinos, a working "blood laser," and celebrating the 50th anniversary of Star Trek were among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

Imposter Supernova Has Erupted At Least Three Times. "The star system Eta Carinae has puzzled astronomers for centuries because of its oddly variable brightness—as bright as a supernova explosion at one point in the 19th century. Now astronomers from the University of Arizona have determined that there were at least two earlier explosions in the star’s long history, making this a very strange star system indeed."

Lost Philae Lander Found Wedged Into a Crack on its Comet. "The European Space Agency lost contact with its Rosetta mission’s plucky little lander, Philae, in May 2015. Now the orbiter’s high-resolution camera has found Philae wedged into a dark crack on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko."

Scientists Just Made a Working Laser Using Blood. Lasers are behind so much of our cutting-edge technology. Now scientists at the University of Michigan have successfully shown that is possible to build a working laser with blood, the better to spot tumors in the human body."

Scientists Have Identified Schadenfreude Brain Cells. "Secretly gloating over the misfortunes of others (a.k.a. schadenfreude) might not be the most noble of human traits, but it’s certainly universal—so much so, that it was memorably immortalized in the hit musical Avenue Q. Neuroscientists may have just identified the brain cells associated with that feeling."

Controversial Maya Codex Is the Real Deal After All. "Scientists have been arguing over the authenticity of an ancient document called the Grolier Codex for 50 years. A new analysis published in a special section of the journal Maya Archaeology has concluded that the codex is indeed genuine, making it the oldest surviving manuscript from the pre-Colombian era."

Take a Day Off Between CrossFit Workouts, Study Says. "Yeah, we know, your CrossFit gym has completely changed your life, you’ve never looked/felt better, and all other exercise programs pale in comparison. But you may want to ease off the intensive workouts now and then. All that over-exertion can actually impair your immune system, according to a new study just published in Frontiers in Physiology."

Scientists Create Robotic Terminator To Hunt 'Darwin's Nightmare' Fish. "Hordes of lionfish have been roaming the Atlantic for several decades now, and their voracious appetite—and lack of natural predators—has seriously upset the ecological balance of those waters. Now there’s a new foundation devoted to building robots to hunt them down—a Terminator for lionfish."

Real Stories About Real People Show Complexity of Mental Illness. " A Hungarian-born man is found ranting in the street that he is “king of the Puerto Ricans.” A perfectly healthy woman feels compelled to undergo over a dozen operations. A man in a straitjacket somehow manages to commit suicide while inside a locked psychiatric ward. These are just a few of the compelling stories in Mark Rubinstein’s new book, Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope." Related excerpt: How the Ghost of Past Trauma Held the Key to One Man's Madness.

It's the Physics That Makes Roller Coasters So Exciting. "If you’re taking advantage of the long holiday weekend to visit your favorite theme park, take a moment to learn a little about the underlying physics of roller coasters, via the latest video from the folks at SciShow."

Your Bad Driving Is the Reason Traffic Jams Exist. "We’ve all been frustrated by city traffic, waiting in a long line of cars for the light to change at an intersection. And then the stupid light turns red again before we can make it through because the cars ahead of us took so long to get going. A new video by CPG Grey deftly explains what’s going on."

Other Cool Links:

The extraordinary Link Between Deep Neural Networks and the Nature of the Universe. Nobody understands why deep neural networks are so good at solving complex problems. Now physicists say the secret is buried in the laws of physics.

Colliding Black Holes Tell New Story of Stars. "Just months after their discovery, gravitational waves coming from the mergers of black holes are shaking up astrophysics." Related: What can the surprisingly huge mass of black holes detected by LIGO tell us about dark matter and early universe?

NASA Just Successfully Launched a Spacecraft to an Asteroid. Related: Why NASA is trying to grab a chunk of asteroid from space. Also: The folks at Wiredgot creative: "NASA is prone to anthropomorphizing its rovers and spacefaring robots, so we decided to go a step further and make OSIRIX-REx (Rex, for short) the star of his own comic strip."

Moving to the Music: "Composers usually arrange musical notes to express emotion. To set a mood. To get people dancing. To give life to inspiration. To sell records. A team of scientists at Aalto University in Finland is arranging notes for a totally different purpose—to move objects.?

How will longer and deeper space travel affect humans? Scientists study the blood of twin NASA astronauts for clues.

And there's more! Might Star Trek's Warp Drive Become A Reality? Why Star Trek’s Prime Directive could never be enforced. Ars Technica asked lawyers to explain how the show's most famous rule would really work. Plus, here's some fun Nerdgassing about Star Trek: Voyager: Would a starship really leave a wake in a nebula? This is how a space saga inspired a generation of scientists & writers. Bonus: Star Trek and Corgis, Because What More Do You Want From Us, Internet? And finally, in recognition of the series' 50th anniversary, the scientists and engineers of NASA collectively wished the entire Star Trek family a happy anniversary. [Image: NASA's image of "Enterprise" nebula as seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope]

Galactic Model Simulates How ET Civilizations Could Be Deliberately Avoiding Earth. "One hypothesis suggests that extraterrestrials haven’t contacted Earth because they’re ignoring us. Now astronomers have simulated how difficult that would be to do."

The Science of Rubber Suction Pants: "The latest in astro-chic fashion aboard the International Space Station is sure to generate a lot of buzz – among scientists, at least. Where else can you get away with wearing rubber suction pants?"

29 unreal images from a man who's spent 29 years inside a legendary physics lab. For instance, check out the photomultiplier tubes being cold-tested in a vat of liquid nitrogen for the MicroBooNE neutrino detector. [Image: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab, 2011]

Reporters should ask themselves: ‘What would Einstein do?' As Tom Levenson writes, "There is a direct correspondence between Einstein’s emphasis on the need to come up with a consistent picture of an event as seen by any observer ... and a critical demand for journalistic rigour."

This week's physics highlights included a strong SETI signal that turned out to be of terrestrial origin, a SpaceX rocket was destroyed at Cape Canaveral, and physicist James Cronin died at 84.

Me at Gizmodo:

The Same Microbe That Led to Black Death Also Caused a Huge Plague Centuries Before. "Centuries before the Black Death decimated the population of Western Europe, an earlier plague epidemic took out over 50 million people (about 15 percent of the population) in the Byzantine empire. A team of German scientists has confirmed that the two plagues were caused by the same bacterium, albeit genetically different strains."

New Analysis Confirms Why the Skagit River Bridge Collapsed. "In May 2013, a bridge spanning the Skagit River along Interstate 5 in Washington state catastrophically collapsed, after an oversized trailer clipped one of the bridge’s cross beams. A new analysis by engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign confirms the many factors that contributed to the collapse, and offers recommendations for how to prevent similar failures in the future."

That's Candle Wax, Not Bird Droppings, Staining The Scream. "A team of Belgian researchers has closed the case on the origins of a mysterious smudge on Norwegian painter Edvard Munch’s most famous painting, the Scream. Long believed to be bird poo, they found that it is bees wax."

Why Superman's Lame Disguise Might Actually Work. "It’s been a longstanding complaint since the first Superman comics debuted in the 1930s: why doesn’t anyone see through Clark Kent’s lame disguise and realize that he’s really Superman? New research suggests that Kent’s trademark glasses actually might work as a disguise—at least around people who don’t know him well."

Year-Long Simulation of Humans Living on Mars Comes To an End. "One year ago, six volunteers—an astrobiologist, a physicist, a pilot, an architect, a journalist, and a soil scientist — entered a 36-by-20 foot dome, located near a barren volcano in Hawaii, to simulate what living conditions would be like on Mars. Today they re-emerged from their year-long isolation."

Watch the Cosmic Evolution of the Universe in This Stunning Short Film. "In Infinitude, abstract, geometrical shapes condense into stars, which explode into supernovae, sending an asteroid careening through space towards a nascent Earth. The mixed media short film is the creation of Canadian filmmaker Scott Portingale."

What In the World Just Happened to Comet 67P? "February 19th, 2016 was going to be just another day on Comet 67P—until suddenly, the icy space rock lit up in a blaze of glory, as if suddenly slapped by an angry angel."

Among this week's physics highlights: The closest exoplanet yet has been discovered in the Proxima Centauri star system, the discovery of the pentaquark has been confirmed (again), and the Dragonfly 44 galaxy is made up almost entirely of dark matter.

Astronomer Avi Loeb Is Here To Talk To You About Exoplanets. "We’re sure you have questions—lots and lots of questions—about this potentially momentous discovery, the hunt for exoplanets more generally, the prospects for future exploration (or even colonization), and the tantalizing possibility of extraterrestrial life. Harvard University astronomer Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb, who chairs the advisory committee for billionaire Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, is with us today to answer them."

Scientists Just Found Signs of Supernovae on the Sea Floor. "Is it possible to find trace evidence of supernovae from millions of years ago in the sediment lining the ocean floor? One astrophysicist has spent the better part of a decade trying to find the proverbial smoking gun to prove that it is. And now, it seems, he has succeeded."

How Playing the Bagpipes Can Kill You. "Bagpipes and other wind instruments produce beautiful music, but they can also be prime breeding grounds for molds and fungi. Players then regularly breathe in those creatures, and can develop inflamed lungs as a result—or even a fatal lung disease. That’s the conclusion of an unusual case study just published in the journal Thorax by researchers at the University Hospital South Manchester in England. They’ve dubbed it 'bagpipe lung.'”

Lawnmower Triggers False Alarm for Northern Lights Display. "A group of scientists at Lancaster University in England are constantly monitoring geomagnetic activity, to get a heads-up for the spectacular night sky display known as the Northern Lights. So a couple of days ago, they were thrilled to get a strong reading that an aurora was likely imminent. Alas, it turned out to be a false alarm. The culprit? A ridable lawn mower."

Why Astronaut Mark Kelly Is Now Even Older Than His Twin Brother: The twin paradox. "Astronaut Scott Kelly returned from a year-long sojourn in space in June. His slightly older astronaut twin, Mark Kelly, stayed home as a control—part of NASA’s twin study to monitor the effects of space on the human body. But there’s a physical change that NASA might not be able to measure that easily. Mark is now even older (by about 5 milliseconds) than his space-faring twin, thanks to special relativity."

How to Make Your Own Gravitational Waves. "Remember that time Stephen Colbert brought physicist Brian Greene on The Late Show to demonstrate the concept of gravitational waves with green lasers? Yeah, that was pretty awesome. Now there’s a handy DIY demonstration for those of us without access to that kind of technology, courtesy of science presenter Steve Mould."

Behold the Very First Color Photograph (1861): Taken by Scottish Physicist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell. "The Scottish scientist chose to take a picture of a tartan ribbon." [Image: James Clerk Maxwell]

The things you can learn from a single grain of sand. "Civil engineers have developed a new method that measures the way forces move through granular materials—one that could improve our understanding of everything from how soils bear the weight of buildings to what stresses are at work deep below the surface of the earth."

Spatial Bodies: Warped Architecture Bends and Twists Osaka Skyline. Per Weburbanist: "Imagine a world in which an abandoned city goes to seed, but rather than plants reclaiming buildings, the buildings grow and morph like unkempt weeds, twisting the skyline into impossible new patterns." [Image: "Spatial Bodies"/AUJIK]

Atomic Light: José Manuel Prieto in the New York Review of Books, on Akademgorodok, city of scientists. "As in the university towns of the United States, scientific activity dominates the entire life of Akademgorodok."

Physics Cocktails

Heavy G

The perfect pick-me-up when gravity gets you down.
2 oz Tequila
2 oz Triple sec
2 oz Rose's sweetened lime juice
7-Up or Sprite
Mix tequila, triple sec and lime juice in a shaker and pour into a margarita glass. (Salted rim and ice are optional.) Top off with 7-Up/Sprite and let the weight of the world lift off your shoulders.

Any mad scientist will tell you that flames make drinking more fun. What good is science if no one gets hurt?
1 oz Midori melon liqueur
1-1/2 oz sour mix
1 splash soda water
151 proof rum
Mix melon liqueur, sour mix and soda water with ice in shaker. Shake and strain into martini glass. Top with rum and ignite. Try to take over the world.